Month: May 2006

Faced with Ridicule, GOP Does 180 on $100 Gas Rebate

Jon Ponder

The incompetence of the Bush Administration echoes once again in the leadership of the man they installed as majority leader in the Senate, Bill Frist. Last week, Sen. Frist okayed a plan to issue a $100 rebate to citizens who buy gas. Now that plan has, well, back-fired:

At a news conference last week to unveil the idea, Sen. James M. Talent (R-Mo.) declared, “It will show people that Washington gets it.”

Many voters, however, concluded that Washington does not get it. Besieged with complaints about political pandering, GOP lawmakers now say the rebate idea is a non-starter. As Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) explained yesterday, “When my own daughter harasses me, you know you’re in trouble.”

It wasn’t just Sen. Lott’s daughter who ridiculed the bill. The GOP senators even took a hit from the Republican Majority Leader in the House:

“I just think that trying to satisfy voters with a $100 voucher is insulting,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House majority leader. “Over the weekend, I heard about it from my constituents a few times. They thought it was stupid.”

Even one of the wingnuttiest wingnuts in the Senate trashed the idea:

“It was a silly idea,” said Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a member of the Republican leadership, who predicted that the rebate would not be in the final energy package when it reached the floor.

Conversely, there’s Sen. Rick Santorum, offering more proof that he is completely clueless:

“Every voter I’ve talked to has been excited of the fact that they get $100 tax relief,” said Senator Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who is in a tough re-election fight. “It does give a temporary help to consumers who are faced with higher prices.”

Team Abramoff Visited the White House over 200 Times in Bush’s First 10 Months in Office

Jon Ponder

The Secret Service released logs showing the comings and goings of convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and members of his staff at the White House that present a jaw-dropping level of access to the Bush Administration after the 2000 election:

Abramoff was a $100,000 fundraiser for Bush [in 2000] and lobbying records obtained by the AP show his lobbying team logged nearly 200 meetings with the administration during its first 10 months in office on behalf of one of his clients, the Northern Mariana Islands.

As Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, someone from Abramoff’s firm was at the White House every business day for 10 months through October 2001.

That’s a whole lotta access.

Cheney’s Gay Daughter Is ‘Surprised’ People Think Her Homophobic Parents Are ‘Loving’

Jon Ponder

The Drudge Report (available on the Internets) has been privy to a yet-to-be-published article on Vice President Dick Cheney’s family from Vanity Fair:

It is surprising they don’t hate you, Mary. It’s even more surprising that you don’t hate them.

In her new memoir, “Now It’s My Turn,” Mary Cheney writes that when she told her parents she was gay, the first words out of her father’s mouth “were exactly the ones that I wanted to hear: ‘You’re my daughter, and I love you, and I just want you to be happy.’”

“…Unfortunately, however, it is in my political interests to crush the hopes of all your kind.”

Vanity Fair editor Todd Purdum reports that Mary Cheney tells her story in a voice very much like her father’s, and that she came out to her parents when she was a junior in high school, on a day when, after breaking up with her first girlfriend, she skipped school, ran a red light, and crashed the family car. Cheney writes that her mother hugged her, but then burst into tears, worried that she would face a life of pain and prejudice…

Riiiggght, Mary. That’s why she was crying. She wasn’t dying inside at the humiliating prospect of facing her Republican friends when they learned that her daughter had chosen to be gay. No, I’m sure it was all about you.

[Mary] also says that one common reaction from people who have read the manuscript of her book is “‘Wow, you guys really have this close-knit, loving family,’ and it always strikes me as ‘Yeah, of course we do.’ It was very surprising to me that people would think we didn’t.”

I’m surprised you’re surprised, Mary. Your parents have a predilection for homophobia that normal loving parents would not have. Your mother has been a shrill opponent of gay rights. Your father would not be vice president today without the votes of homophobes in Ohio who turned out in droves to vote for a ban on gay marriage that was placed on the ballot in a cynical move by your father’s supporters to gin up support among the bigots and yahoos.

It is surprising they don’t hate you, Mary. It’s even more surprising that you don’t hate them.

Pew: Even Evangelicals Sick of Bush

Buck Banks

Bible-rousers: As if it weren’t already bad enough for the Worst President Ever, white Protestant evangelicals — who helped George Bush take the White House — are joining the rest of us in giving a big thumbs down for the prez’ performance, according to recent analysis by the Pew Research Center.

As Bush’s job approval rating continues to set new low records, Republicans are beginning to worry about the weakened president’s impact on his party’s performance in the fall mid-terms. And without the evangelicals’ support Bush’s slump bodes ill for the Repugs’ prospects this fall.

‘I am tired of all the problems associated with the Bush administration.’
— 45 percent of evangelical Christians

Pew finds that while a majority of white evangelical Protestants still support the president, significantly fewer approve of his performance in office now (55 percent approve, 38 percent disapprove) than at the start of his second term when 72 percent approved and only 22 percent disapproved.

Since the beginning of his second term in office, Bush’s approval rating has declined as much among white evangelicals as among the public as a whole. His personal ratings among evangelicals are more negative than ever before — 35 percent now have an unfavorable view of Bush, compared with 21 percent of registered evangelical voters in October 2004. And 45 percent of evangelicals agreed with the statement that “I am tired of all the problems associated with the Bush administration.”

Pew found little indication that evangelicals are likely to abandon the Republican Party — after all, who else are they going to vote for? Catholic John Kerry!?

No, white Protestant evangelicals might be disappointed in George Bush’s performance, but they are going to stick with the party that supports school vouchers, prayer in school, teaching creationism and taking away a woman’s right to choose. What option do they have?

But maybe, just maybe they won’t be so damned fervently Republican in the midterms. Hmmm, what would Jesus do?

Polls: More New Lows For Bush

Jon Ponder

Everybody hates Bush now except for two-thirds of Republicans. Their delusional faith in this incompetent aristocrat is more dangerous to our national security than al Qaeda.

CBS Poll:

Only 33 percent approve of his job performance, Mr. Bush’s lowest approval rating yet in CBS News polls. A majority – 58 percent of those polled – say they disapprove of the president. Mr. Bush appears to be losing support from his own party. His approval rating among Republicans has dropped to 68 percent.

USA Today/Gallup:

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday found Bush’s approval rating at 34 percent, two points under his previous low. He also received the lowest ratings of his presidency on his handling of the economy, energy and foreign affairs. He tied his previous low on Iraq: 32 percent.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

The function of the press is to explore and investigate events, inform the people what is going on, and to expose the harmful as well as the good influences at work. There is no higher function performed under our constitutional regime …. A reporter is no better than his source of information. Unless he has a privilege to withold the identity of his source, he will be the victim of governmental intrigue or aggression. If he can be summoned to testify in secret before a grand jury, his sources will dry up and the attempted exposure, the effort to enlighten the public, will be ended.

The intrusion of government into this doman is symptomatic of the disease of this society. As the years pass, the power of government becomes more and more pervasive. It is power to suffocate both people and causes. Those in power, whatever their politics, want only to perpetuate it. Now that the forces of the law and the tradition that has protected the press are broken down, the people are the victims. The First Amendment, as I read it, was designed precisely to prevent that tragedy.

— William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Impeachment Petitions Delivered to Hastert

Buck Banks

Signed, sealed, delivered: At 9 a.m. yesterday, May 1, aka “Mission Accomplished Day,” Ellen Tenney of Rockingham, Vermont, presented Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert with petitions from three towns in Vermont calling for the impeachment of George Bush. The towns each passed resolutions to send the petitions.

These are the first of what organizers are hoping will be many petitions submitted by towns, cities and possibly states across the nation to Congress. Organizers say they are presented under the guidelines of Jefferson’s Manual, Section 603, and likely will be referred to a House committee — probably the Judiciary — for consideration.

Similar resolutions have now been passed by at least 13 cities and towns, and have been introduced in three state legislatures, with more expected this week.

Information on this procedure and a list of cities and states where resolutions have been introduced or passed can be found here.

Citizens Impeachment Commission

After Downing Street Coalition

Bushco Clamping Down On — Everybody

Buck Banks

Zip it: Last week I posted a quote by Paul Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Nazi propaganda minister: “It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.” Seems like Bushco has taken that as its motto and, as it often does, extrapolated it to the next illogical step: “It is the absolute right of the State to form and control public opinion and limit the free flow of information among citizens — absolutely.”

As reported in the “New York Times” yesterday, it’s becoming clear the administration is starting to play hardball with journalists over leaks. That the Leaker-In-Chief is leaking, I mean leading the charge against media is more than a little ironic, since he don’t read it and he don’t watch it, preferring to get his “fair and balanced” news in the form of easy-to-digest bullet points from his aides.

The administration and its allies say that all avenues must be explored to ensure that vital national security information does not fall into the hands of the nation’s enemies.

In February, Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales whether the government’s investigation into The Times’s disclosure of a National Security Agency eavesdropping program included “any potential violation for publishing that information.”

Mr. Gonzales responded: “Obviously, our prosecutors are going to look to see all the laws that have been violated. And if the evidence is there, they’re going to prosecute those violations.”

Obviously, Herr Attorney General believes he’s got some legal traction, otherwise he wouldn’t have said “all the laws that have been violated.” Look out, journos, the presumption of innocence offically has been replaced by the assumption of guilt by decree of the nation’s chief lawyer.

And then there’s the FBI’s recent boneheaded move to reclassify and confiscate the files of late columnist Jack Anderson, in what Molly Ivins calls the “Great Bush Reclassification Project.” Apparently, there are some who believe the skeletal remains in those boxes of notes are potentially damaging to … somebody. See, guys, the story broke years ago, cat’s out of the bag, game over, fergetaboutit. For the record, Anderson’s son Kevin has said that there’s no way in hell the FBI’s getting his daddy’s notes, and that he and his family members are willing to go to jail to protect the notes.

On yet another front, the “National Journal” reports that the CIA has changed the rules governing what former agents and current contractors can write about the agency.

According to several former CIA officials affected by the new policy, the rules are intended to suppress criticism of the Bush administration and of the CIA. The officials say the restrictions amount to an unprecedented political “appropriateness” test at odds with earlier CIA policies on outside publishing.

The move is a significant departure from the CIA’s longtime practice of allowing ex-employees to take critical or contrary positions in public, particularly when they are contractors paid to advise the CIA on important topics and to publish their assessments.

But in recent years, former employees have written memoirs and opinion pieces challenging the CIA and the Bush administration, particularly for its use of prewar intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. The board did not find that any of those pieces revealed secrets, a fact that makes the CIA’s new review standards troubling, former officials and intelligence-community analysts said.

Many of those experts believe that public criticism provides an important source of alternative analysis — something the CIA needs to understand terrorism, global disease, and other emerging threats. But the White House and CIA Director Porter Goss view spies-turned-authors as political liabilities who embarrass an already battered administration, former officials said.

Bushco already has mounted an almost unprecedented assault on personal freedom with the illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens and increasing government access to personal information. Now it is closing the circle by quashing the press and muffling the voice of dissent among its employees.

Meanwhile the Leaker-In-Chief has it within his power to declassify anything at any time and leak it to anybody. Mr. President, would you please declassify my personal dossier and leak it to me so I can see what your evil minions know about me and my life? Please? I’ll turn in an enemy of the State in return. Honest.

Colbert Lampoons Bush at WH Correspondents Dinner

Buck Banks

Satiricaliness: Stephen Colbert, whose loopy character on Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report” is known for his “truthiness,” delivered a major dose of it to a displeased President and Mrs. Bush Saturday night at the White House Correspondents Dinner, according to Editor & Publisher:

A blistering comedy “tribute” to President Bush by Comedy Central’s faux talk-show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close.

‘I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.’

Earlier, the president had delivered his talk to the 2,700 attendees, including many celebrities and top officials, with the help of a Bush impersonator.

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk-show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the “Rocky” movies, always getting punched in the face — “and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world.”

Turning to the war, he declared, “I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”
[…]

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press could remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of Government and inform the people.

— Hugo L. Black (1886-1971), U.S. Supreme Court Justice